A reviewer mentioned this scene from Tar, which intrigued me, so I looked up the screenplay.
This is long, so feel free to ignore it. Is there a point? Perhaps. Also note that the wording is kind of explicit at times. I censored it a bit.
Tar is a conductor teaching a class at a school in Berlin. Max, the main target of her lecture in this scene, is a student.
Spoiler line from Tar:
Unfortunately, the architect of your soul appears to be social media.
MAX (24) conducts a STUDENT ENSEMBLE in rehearsal for Anna Thorvaldsdóttir’s Ró. This interrupted by the click, click, click of Tár’s baton striking a stand.
TÁR (O.C.)
Alright, let’s stop here.
Tár joins Max at the podium.
TÁR (CONT'D)
Thank you, Max... for my own edification, why did you come to Juilliard?
MAX
Uh... it’s the best music conservatory in the country?
TÁR
People from Curtis, Eastman, and others may beg to differ. Juilliard
is a brand, right? Did you come here to study with a brand?
MAX ... uh, no.
TÁR
There was a teacher, or graduate somewhere down the line that conjured something in your imagination. Someone you aspired to be yourself. Who was it?
MAX
(smiles) Sarah Chang.
TÁR
You’re a violinist.
MAX
Yes.
TÁR
(stares at score) Then I can see why you would choose to conduct a piece like this. There
must be a familiar pleasure in presiding over a bed of strings that behave as if they’re tuning. (Max good-naturedly laughs)
This piece is very au courant.
TÁR (CONT'D)
Here the composer tells us to begin with “back and forth tremolo strokes with wire brush & slowly sliding crotales over skin.” Sounds like René Redzepi’s recipe for reindeer.
Max laughs again.
TÁR (CONT'D)
Exciting to play new music, isn’t it?
(Max nods)
Please join the other fellows.
Tár looks out at the seated students.
TÁR (CONT'D)
Now, I know you’re all conducting students of Mr. Wolfe’s, but how many of you also study composition?
(hands up, she selects one)
What is your name?
OLIVE KERR
Olive Kerr.
TÁR
Okay, Olive. What do you make of what we’ve been listening to?
OLIVE KERR
It’s... pretty awesome... I mean there’s incredible atonal tension.
TÁR
(leaves stage)
I agree. About the tension part. Now you can intellectually contemplate, or m******* about the felicity of the so-called
atonal, but the important question here is what are you conducting? What is the effect? What is it actually doing to me?
(heads to where Max sits)
Good music can be as ornate as a cathedral or as bare as a potting shed. So long as it allows you to answer both of those questions. What do you think Max?
Max’s looks put on the spot, as nervous as his bouncing knee.
MAX
Uh... when Anna Thorvaldsdóttir gave her Master Class.
MAX (CONT'D)
She said she was often influenced by the form and structure of landscapes and nature she grew up within. But I’m not sure if she was interested per se, in describing those actual sounds.
TÁR
Very Punkt Kontra Punkt. (off blank looks, moves to apron of stage and sits)
Yes, the intent of her composition is vague, to say the least. So if her intent is vague, how do you, as a conductor, have a point of view about anything? Now to be fair, there are times when you will simply have no choice and be made to stand in front
of an orchestra and pretend there are invisible structures. But my prayer for you is that you‘ll be spared the embarrassment of standing on a podium with the four thirty-three trying to sell a car without an engine. Because now, my friends, now is the time to conduct music that actually requires something from you. (heads back to Max and takes a seat next to him)
For instance, Max. Why not a Kyrie? ... like Bach’s Mass in B minor?
MAX
I’m not really into Bach.
TÁR
You’re not into Bach. Oh, Max. Have you read the Schweitzer book?
MAX
No.
TÁR
Well, you should. (feigns a head punch)
It’s an important text. Antonia Brico thought so. So much so that she shipped herself to Equatorial Africa and canoed up the Congo River to track Schweitzer down and ask him to teach her what he knew about Bach... somewhere I’ve got a
picture of her in a pith helmet. Have you ever played or conducted Bach?
MAX
Honestly, as a BIPOC pangender- person, I would say Bach’s misogynistic life makes it kind of impossible for me to take his music seriously.
TÁR
What exactly do you mean by that?
MAX
Well, didn’t he sire like twenty kids?
TÁR
That’s documented, along with a considerable amount of music. But I’m unclear what his prodigious skills have to do with B minor.
MAX’S KNEE NOW ON OVERDRIVE, unignorable and intolerable to Tár who gets to her feet and heads back up onto the stage.
TÁR (CONT'D)
Okay, sure. It’s your choice. A soul selects her own society. But remember the flip-side of that selection closes the valves of one’s attention. (pacing now)
Of course, siloing what’s acceptable or not acceptable is a construct of many, if not most, symphony orchestras, who see it as their imperial right to curate for the cretins. So, slippery as it is, there’s some merit in examining Max’s... allergy. Can classical music written by a bunch of straight, Austro-German, church-going white guys, exalt us individually, as well as collectively? And who, may I ask, gets to decide that?
(turns back to Max)
What about Beethoven? Are you into him? Because for meee? As a U-Haul Lesbian? I’m not really sure about
ol’ Ludwig. But then I face him and find myself nose-to-nose with his magnitude and inevitability. (moves to piano bench)
Max, indulge me, let us allow Bach a similar gaze.
She gestures Max over to join her at the bench. He walks back up onto the stage and just stands there.
TÁR (CONT'D)
(pats bench)
Sit.
She playfully begins the C Major Prelude from Bach’s Well- Tempered Clavier. She makes a clown face. The point being this piece is so well-known that she knows she must make fun of the example before anyone else in the room can.
TÁR (CONT'D)
This is all filigree. It could be a first-year piano student, or Schroder playing for Lucy. (she gazes up moon-eyed) ... or Glen Gould for that matter.
She Gould-groans and changes the attack. Then stops.
TÁR (CONT'D)
It’s not until it changes. (she plays the first change) When you get inside, that you see what it really is. A question, and
an answer. (plays second change)
That begs another question. There’s a humility in Bach. He’s not pretending he’s certain of anything. He knows
it’s the question that involves the listener. Never the answer. (stops)
What do you think, Max?
MAX
You play really well? But... nowadays? White, male, cis composers? Just not my thing.
MAX’S KNEE starts BOUNCING up and down again. TÁR’S HAND reaches over and stops it.
TÁR
Don’t be so eager to be offended. The narcissism of small differences leads to the most boring conformity.
MAX
I guess Edgar Varèse is okay... I mean I like Arcana anyway.
Tár leaves stage, up the aisle, into the rake with the other fellows, leaving Max alone on the piano bench.
TÁR
Then you must be aware that Varèse once famously stated that jazz was “a negro product exploited by the
Jews.” That didn’t stop Gerry Goldsmith from ripping him off for his Planet of the Apes score. (pacing the rake)
Kind of a perfect insult, don’t you think? But you see the problem with enrolling yourself as an ultrasonic epistemic dissident is, if Bach’s talent can be reduced to his gender, birth country, religion, sexuality, and so on -- then so can yours. Someday Max, when you go out into the world and guest conduct before a major, or minor, orchestra, you may notice that the players have more than lightbulbs and music on their stands. They’ll also have been handed rating sheets. The purpose of which is to rate you. What kind of criteria would you hope they use to do this? Your score reading and stick technique, or something else?
(Max is silent)
Okay everyone. Using Max’s criteria, let us consider Max’s thing. In this case Anna Thorvaldsdóttir. Now, can we agree
upon two pieces of observation: One, that Anna was born in Iceland? And two, that she is -- in a Waldorf teacher kind of way -- a super hot young woman? Show of hands. (hands shoot up )
Great. Now let’s turn our gaze back to the piano bench up there and see if we can square how any of those things possibly relate to the person seated before us. (Max heads for the exit)
Where are you going?
MAX
You’re a f* b*!
TÁR
And you are a robot! Unfortunately, the architect of your soul appears to be social media. If you want to dance the mask, you must service the composer. Sublimate yourself, your ego, and yes, your identity! You must in fact stand in front of the public and God and obliterate yourself.